Filosofia Theoretica: Journal of African Philosophy, Culture and Religions

The Democracy Deficit, Global Capitalist System and Ubuntu

2026-09-08T06:23:39+00:00

Many African countries are plagued by a democracy deficit associated with authoritarianism, neo-patrimonial systems, a lack of democratic accountability to the poor majority, and illegitimate accountability to corporations. There is a school of thought associated with the view of Patrick Chabal that maintains that the democracy deficit in Africa emanates from authoritarian rulers who adopt a neopatrimonial system. I will show that such a view is too narrow, as it fails to consider how the world capitalist economic system undermines democracy. I will use the views of Issa Shivji, Michelle Williams, Nancy Fraser, and Samir Amin to show that the democracy deficit in Africa emanates from the world capitalist economic system. If the democracy deficit, among other factors, is an effect of the
incompatibility of democracy and the capitalist economic system, then there is a need to construe a non-capitalist economic system that is compatible with democracy. In this work, I seek to contribute to the literature by showing that the Ubuntu-related feta kgomo o tshware motho maxim, which prioritises the promotion of welfare over the accumulation of wealth, is important for constituting an economic system that is compatible with democracy.

Moral Selfhood and Ubuntu in Curriculum: Reimagining Adolescent Identity Formation Amid Capitalist Modernity

2026-09-08T06:33:12+00:00

School curricula shape adolescents’ identity and moral selfhood, yet research on indigenising historically colonised curricula remains limited. This paper examines moral identity formation in Zimbabwe’s secondary education under HeritageBased Education using Ubuntu as a normative ethical lens. It argues that dominant psychological models and neoliberal schooling prioritise individual achievement
in ways that can fragment relational moral development. Using a qualitative and philosophical approach, the study analyses policy documents, classroom observations and interviews with sixteen participants, including teachers, administrators, students, School Development Committee chairpersons and a Curriculum Development official. Findings show a complex tension between exam-driven schooling and Ubuntu-centred relational ethics across policy, pedagogy and community expectations. Ubuntu foregrounds interconnectedness, mutual care and social responsibility and reorients moral identity toward relational belonging. This study advances scholarship by integrating Ubuntu with curriculum inquiry and demonstrating how moral selfhood is co-constructed through institutional structures, classroom practices and community values.

The Two Menkitis: A Developmental Reading of Personhood and the Case for Impartial Communitarianism

2026-09-08T06:54:06+00:00

Kwame Gyekye’s charge that Ifeanyi Menkiti’s account of personhood is a radical communitarianism that subordinates the individual to the group has framed a long debate in African philosophy. This article argues that the later iterations of the debate ignored a development in its central text: the 1984 essay subordinates rights to duties and the individual to the community, giving Gyekye’s label its purchase; the 2004 restatement abandons that ranking, foregrounding the individual’s standing and worth, and Menkiti’s late writings confirm the direction of the change. Read developmentally, the mature Menkiti converges with Gyekye’s moderate communitarianism, and the radical/moderate dichotomy ceases to mark a real difference between them. The article names the converged position impartial
communitarianism and specifies the conditions that make communal deliberation legitimate: inclusion, answerability to reciprocal recognition, and reversibility. It confronts the hardest cases, female genital cutting, virginity testing, and child marriage, conceding that reform has largely come through external constitutional means. The contribution is interpretive, dissolving the disagreement the dichotomy was thought to mark.

Ifá and Wayang as Posthuman Knowledge Machines: Veridiction, Distributed Agency, and Added Value

2026-09-08T06:57:15+00:00

This article develops a conceptual-comparative reading of Yorùbá Ifá divination and Javanese wayang kulit as posthuman knowledge machines. It asks how both practices redistribute epistemic agency beyond the human, including what counts as an authoritative speaker, and how they produce veridiction that turns narrative into binding guidance. Rather than treating Ifá and wayang as folklore, heritage objects, or symbolic performances alone, the article argues that both function as structured apparatuses for authorizing knowledge through corpus, procedure, material mediation, and communal uptake. Ifá is examined as a divinatory and normative system in which guidance is routed through corpus, consultation, and interpretive authority, while wayang is read as a performative machine that transforms spectacle into tuntunan, or moral guidance. The article concludes that their added value lies in epistemic-ethical surplus: the capacity to produce accountable guidance through distributed agency and more-than-human relationality.

Traditional Igbo Concepts of Death, Burial, Ancestors and Reincarnation: An Exposition

2026-09-08T07:00:30+00:00

It is biological for every living thing to experience death, but not all living things face death with the intensity of grief and pain as man does. The unavoidability and inevitability of death generate fear and anxiety in man. In the Igbo worldview, just like many other cultures in Africa, death is conceived as a necessity which ensures continuity of life, a beginning of new life, a separation from the community of the living, a union with the living dead known as the ancestors, an initiation of the spirit into the ancestral fold and a sign of human finitude It is within this context that the Igbo see death as ‘going to the spiritual home’ with the possibility of reincarnation. From this perspective, death is seen as a change of existence (life) and not an end of existence. Death for the Igbo is an essential and integral part of life which has positive value in the life of man. This study exposes and examines the notion of death in the Igbo traditional worldview. It x-rays the types of death and the belief in death as a necessary end, commencement of another life, death as separation, as union, as initiation, death as a sign of human finitude and the idea of ancestors and reincarnation. I argue that the Igbo conception of death alleviates the morbid fear of death and anxiety in man since death could be a transition to a higher ontological status. I will deploy the expository, analytic and hermeneutic methods in this work.

Sifting the Situated Self: Serequeberhan’s Radical African Hermeneutics as a Methodology for Philosophical Counselling

2026-09-08T07:04:07+00:00

Philosophical counselling proposes to examine life through philosophical frameworks and concepts. When practiced and actualised in postcolonial African contexts, however, this commitment encounters a specific challenge: the counselee who arrives at the session is not a neutral, universal, or ahistorical subject. They are a situated self, constituted through their relations to community, a living past, and a historical horizon shaped by the particular tensions of the postcolonial present. This paper argues that Tsenay Serequeberhan’s radical African hermeneutics, and specifically his double task of African philosophy accompanied by three processes, offers a methodology suitable for this task. It constitutes a hermeneutical orientation that operates on three levels: the philosophical counsellor’s epistemological stance before they enter a session, the collaborative movement within the session, and the goal toward which the session moves. Demonstrating this orientation, the paper offers a situated hermeneutic re-reading of an existing philosophical counselling case study.